Developing
Advocacy Support for Parents with Learning Difficulties: An Action
Research Project
(Grantholders:
Tim Booth and Wendy Booth; Funded by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation)
The project set
out to explore ways of delivering support to parents with learning
difficulties that are non-stigmatising, non-intrusive and responsive
to their own views of their needs.
Aims
- To develop a locally-based
support network for parents with learning difficulties in Sheffield.
- To undertake a
user-centred evaluation of the project in terms of its success
in: enabling parents by creating opportunities for them to develop
and exhibit their competence and enhance their self-esteem; empowering
parents by improving their access to resources and their sense
of control over their own lives and their family's destiny; and
extending parents' social networks through contact with other
families in a similar situation.
- To produce practical
guidelines for organising such a support network as a model for
use elsewhere.
Methods
The project broke
new ground by developing an innovative approach based on the
following distinguishing characteristics:
- A principled approach
grounded on the ideas of the advocacy and self-help movements.
- A theoretically-driven
approach based on an explicit model of parenting and social support.
- A research-based
approach rooted in the experience of parents themselves.
- An experimental
approach aimed at testing out different ways of meeting the support
needs of parents.
- An evaluative approach
based on the careful and systematic evaluation of project outcomes.
- A user-led approach
which involves parents in both the development and the evaluation
of the project.
The Development
Project
The development
project - called Parents Together - was conceived as a piece
of action research. It set out to develop and evaluate in partnership
with parents practical ways of supporting them in their parenting
role.
Drawing on an ecological model of the
relationship between parenting and social support, the project
adopted an advocacy approach aimed at: reducing the environmental
strains that undermine parents' ability to cope; challenging
the discriminatory views of their fitness for parenthood held
by many professionals; and providing forms of support that encourage
parents and give them confidence in their own parenting.The Evaluation
The evaluation formed
a continuous part of the project and focussed on two issues:
- the effectiveness
of an advocacy approach towards supported parenting with a view
to drawing out the lessons for use elsewhere;
- testing the ecological model of parenting
and support on which the project was based.
The project followed
a participatory strategy involving the parents themselves as
co-participants in all stages of the evaluation in order to ensure
it was driven by their experience.
The Action Phase
and Follow-On
Parents Together
ran for eighteen months from February 1996 to July 1997. Follow-on
funding was awarded by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation with the
aim of establishing the project on a more permanent footing.
Sheffield Women's Cultural Group agreed to provide a home for
the group and this partnership led to the (Link) Supported Learning
Project.
A full account of
the Parents Together project is given in Developing
Advocacy Support
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